Quantum Field Theory,
Personhood, and the Trinity:
Echoes and Resonances
Arnold E. Sikkema
Past President, CSCA
Professor of Physics, TWU
ASA 2107: Exploring New Heights
for Science & Stewardship
Golden, CO – 30 July 2017, 4:45pm
Things and Relations
“For an interaction to be real, the ‘nature’ of the related things must derive from these relations, while at the same time the relations must derive from the ‘nature’ of the things.” (p. 95)
Bantam, 1984
Chemist
Ilya Prigogine
Philosopher
Isabelle Stengers
nndb.com
sts2016bcn.org
Things and Relations
“For an interaction to be real, the ‘nature’ of the related things must derive from these relations, while at the same time the relations must derive from the ‘nature’ of the things.” (p. 95)
John Zizioulas considers this an echo of Patristic ontology. “Relational Ontology: Insights
from Patristic Thought,” in John Polkinghorne (ed.), The Trinity and an Entangled World (Eerdmans, 2010), p. 152.Bantam, 1984
Eurokinissi, Creative Commons
Colin Gunton: A Universe of
Dynamic Relations
“modern field theory…has led…to theconceptual echo of trinitarian theology inrelativity theory and its developments…”(p. 151)
“the physics of relativity…introduces a dynamism into the way things are conceived. There are no unchanging substances which enter into relations –as on the view of Aristotle and Newton alike – but the whole universe becomes conceivable as a dynamic structure of fields of force in mutually constitutive relations…” (pp. 152f.)
faith-theology.com
T&T Clark, 1997
Thomas F. Torrance on Perichoresis
“mutual indwelling of the Father and the
Son and the Spirit” (p. 102)
peri: about or around
chora: space or room, or chorein: contain,
make room, or go forwardmoltmanniac.com T&T Clark, 1996
Thomas F. Torrance on Perichoresis
“onto-relational concept of the divine
Persons, or an understanding of the three
divine Persons in the one God in which
the ontic relations between them belong
to what they essentially are in
themselves… Along with this there
developed…the new concept of person…the
relations between persons belong to what
persons are.” (p. 102)
moltmanniac.com T&T Clark, 1996
Thomas F. Torrance on Perichoresis
“The patristic concept of perichoresis [expresses] something of the
mystery of the Holy Trinity in respect of the coinherent way in
which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit exist in one another
and dwell in one another as one God, three Persons.” (p. 168)
John’s gospel: “I am in the Father and the Father in me”
“perichoresis has essentially a dynamic and not a static sense, with the
meaning of mutual indwelling and inter-penetrating one another
in [an] onto-relational, spiritual and intensely personal way.” (p.
171)
Quantum Field Theory
quantum mechanics + special relativity
the vacuum: a background “sea”
its excitations are “particles”
interaction: mediating particles
The First Feynman Diagram: QED
“Space-Time Approach to Quantum
Electrodynamics,” Physical Review 76 (1949) 769.
Richard Feynmanaps.org
Quantum Field Theory
What is an Electron?
Quantum Field Theory
What is an Electron?
Quantum Field Theory
What is an Electron?
God – law – thing
God – lawful thing
Thing and Law
are entangled
Torrance on Maxwell on Faraday
Thomas F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of
Knowledge (Eerdmans, 1984): Ch. 6, “Christian Faith and Physical
Science in the Thought of James Clerk Maxwell.”
Maxwell saw that for Faraday “lines of force belonging to bodies
were in some sense part of them.” (p. 228)
aip.org
Torrance on Maxwell…
“[Maxwell] claimed, ‘in a scientific point of view the relation is the
most important thing to know’… Relations…belong to reality as
much as things do, for the inter-relations of things are, in part at
least, constitutive of what they are. Being-constituting relations of
this kind we may well speak of as ‘onto-relations’.” (p. 230)
Torrance on Maxwell…
“In the Reformed theological tradition the notion of the person is held
to be controlled by the person-constituting and person-intensifying
activity of God in the Incarnation, such that union with Christ becomes
the ground for interpersonal relations in the Church. Relations between
persons have ontological force and are part of what persons are as
persons – they are real, person-constituting relations. That was the
theology underlying Clerk Maxwell’s concept of union with Christ and of
inter-personal relations in Christ, which it was not his nature to isolate in
some compartmentalised way from his understanding of real, ontological
relations in the physical universe.” (p. 230)
The Field Notion and Christianity
“[For Maxwell,] central to the biblical understanding of the person is the reality of human relationships as an integral part of whatpersons really are. You as a person are not an isolated individual, like the Newtonian particle separated from other autonomous particles [but] are interrelated with others, your parents, your friends, even people with whom you disagree. These interrelationships constitute the very stuff of personal being…. This deep appreciation led to Maxwell’s development of the electromagnetic field in order to describe particles as never separable from their interactions.”
W. Jim Neidhardt, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 41:3 (Sep. 1989) 137-142. [emphasis in original]
Quantum Field Theory
What is an Electron?
God – lawful thing
Thing and Law
are entangled
Divine and Human Agency
Lawfulness is integral to thingness
A multi-aspectual world
Quantitative Amount
Spatial Continuous extension
Kinematic Movement
Physical Interaction
Biotic Generation
Sensitive Feeling
Analytical Distinction
Cultural Formative power; creativity
Lingual Symbolic meaning
Social Social interaction
Economic Resource use
Aesthetic Harmony
Juridical What is due
Ethical Self-giving love
Credal Vision, commitmentFor much more on this, see
kgsvr.net/dooy
A multi-
aspectual
world
Divine and Human Agency
Lawfulness is integral to thingness
A multi-aspectual world
So, is agency…
Top-down?
Bottom-up?
Coherent!
Simmons on Entanglement & Perichoresis
Fortress Press, 2014
Quantum Entanglement
adapted from blogs.umass.edu/Techbytes/2016/10/18/quantum-computing
↑ ↓ − ↓ ↑
Simmons on Entanglement & Perichoresis
“Everything is interconnected at the
subatomic level.” (p. 147)
“Particles that are once interrelated can never
be fully separated; so too the mutually
indwelling activity of the Trinity can never be
dismembered.” (p. 144)
Fortress Press, 2014
Simmons on Entanglement & Perichoresis
“Perichoresis as entanglement can be
understood as the energy of the divine Trinity
through which the creation is expressed. The
immanent Trinity exists in superposition with
the economic Trinity and evolves within the
entangled life of God with the creation, thus
supporting a panentheistic model of God.”
(p. 144)
Fortress Press, 2014
A prayer of Maxwell
“Almighty God, who hast created man in Thine own
image, and made him a living soul that he might seek
after Thee and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to
study the works of Thy hands that we may subdue the earth to
our use, and strengthen our reason for Thy service; and so to
receive Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him whom
Thou hast sent to give us knowledge of salvation and the
remission of our sins. All which we ask in the name of the same
Jesus Christ our Lord.”
